- Person A makes a claim.
- That claim is neither provable nor unfalsifiable.
- Person A is steadfast in his belief of his claim.
- Person B is steadfast in his disbelief of the claim.
- As per part 2, person B can not falsify the claim.
Conclusion) All people should act as though the claim is true because it can’t be falsified. This is despite the fact that it can’t be proved and would be a serious detriment to person B.
Or to create an analagous example:
- I and others claim that red houses will attract demons.
- We can not prove that this claim is true, nor can anybody falsify this claim.
- We are steadfast in believing red houses attract demons.
- You think us fools for believing red houses attract demons.
- You can not falsify the red house claim.
Conclusion) We should do everything in our power to keep houses from being red, even if it means burning down your red house.
If the people of the Papal States want to believe in what the Church teaches, then fine. But to abduct a small child is indescribably cruel.
I think you are perhaps ignoring one important aspect. That is of which specific claims actually reflect moral truth.
My point before was that as an atheist, you cannot say that X is a true moral claim and Y is not a true moral claim. Moral claims are claimed to have spiritual consequences. As human beings, we cannot directly verify the existence of a spiritual realm or any spiritual consequences.
So on the question of the existence of spiritual consequences of acts and what they maybe, the atheist must remain undecided.
Now it is possible that you might have subscribed to a strict form of empiricism and think that lack of any direct evidence necessitates the assumption that such a spiritual realm does not exist. I think there is a grave mistake in extending this matter to that of what you cannot by definition verify directly at this time. The simple reason being that the spiritual truths claimed can indeed be verified firsthand by you after your suppossed death in this life. So it is not really a matter of inability to verify the truths.
This brings you back to the choice everyone faces. Given a historical claim such as the death and resurrection, we must
- evaluate the evidence for the truth of the claim
- decide to believe or reject the authority of the person that performed the act
Christians are those who decided to accept the authority of Christ due to the extraordinary level of witness of those who claimed to have seen the risen Christ. So this is essentially a matter of one group saying they want to believe Bob and his friends who saw X while one group saying that they don’t trust Bob and his friends. Any interested person can question the sincerity of Bob and his friends and arrive at a reasonable conclusion whether they were lying or telling the truth.
Now while it is possible that you may not feel the same conviction from the level of witness given by Bob and his pals and feel it good to reject, this leaves you in a position of limbo on the question of spiritual truths. This is why I said that you are undecided while we have reason to act.
Have you ever seen or heard a mother lose her child. If that’s charity then it’s easily the most grotesque parody of charity ever seen.
Finally, can anybody address my scenario above? How would you feel if you were working in Saudi Arabia, and someone construed something you said as blasphemous against Islam. They take your child away and say you can get him back only by converting. Is this right because it is legal? How would you feel? Is this charitable?
The issue you speak here is a bit more complicated and requires a lot more things to consider.
First is the issue of Islam and its claims as reasons to think it true. The problem with Islam is that even if claims were given to be true, it does not give us actual reasons to think Islam is actually true. So we would hold that it is problematic that anyone adheres to Islam in the first place. This is after all why the Church has missionary activities aimed at non-Christians.
So strictly speaking, to convert someone to Islam is not a charitable act because it is to convert someone to something that even the Muslims cannot be certain of to be true.
Second issue is with respect to maintaining order and good relations in society. This is where the idea of religious toleration comes in to play. So the Catholics may have to respect non-Catholic believers out or respect. Similarly, even those of other religions will have to respect others.
The circumstance discussed here is special in that the child happened to be baptized. So in one sense you have the problem of taking the child away from the parents. On the other hand, you have the problem of leaving him with the parents who will certainly raise him with Jewish teachings.
So you have a situation where one has to pick between two goods.
- the good of being with parents
- the good of salvation
The Pope picked the 2nd and I think in his place I would have too.
